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May 9, 2012

G30: Royals 4, Red Sox 3

Lester (5-6-4-1-3, 108) threw 38 pitches in the first inning, insuring that he would have a short night. It was a bizarre inning in which Marlon Byrd committed an two-base error on a ball hit right at him and Cody Ross bobbled and lost control of another fly ball on the track in left-center. All three first-inning runs were unearned.

Boston loaded the bases in the third on singles by Byrd, Ryan Sweeney and Dustin Pedroia. With two outs, Adrian Gonzalez brought them all in, tying the game with a double to right-center.

The Royals retook the lead on doubles by Irving Falu and Alcides Escobar.

In the ninth, against Jonathan Broxton, Ross singled and Jarrod Saltalamacchia walked. Bobby Valentine had Byrd bunt the runners to second and third. That did no good, as Sweeney lined out to short left and Mike Aviles grounded out to shortstop.

Will Middlebrooks went 0-for-4 (K, 1-3, 6-3, F9) and did not set a new record with at least one extra-base hit in the first six games of his career. He'll have to settle for sharing the MLB record of five games with Enos Slaughter.

It was a chore to listen to NESN tonight.

Dennis Eckersley harped on a first-inning non-strike call made by home plate umpire Jeff Nelson against Lester for the entire night. (He whined and moaned so much I thought he was auditioning for a job in the Tampa Bay booth.) If Lester had been given the call, it would have ended a 1-2-3 first inning on 14 pitches. Eck's point was the non-strike three call - which, by the way, was not a strike according to NESN's pitch zone - "forced" Lester to throw another 24 pitches. So, Lester had 24 additional chances to get the final out and couldn't do it, all because the big, bad umpire did his job correctly. An ace has got to rise above stuff like that (and misplays in the field); Lester couldn't do it. (I was hoping to post the f/x picture, but it does not currently have Lester's info.)

Also, in the top of the first, Don Orsillo said something about Chen's starts at Kauffman Stadium this year and then told us Chen's career won-loss record at home (30-26). What makes this useless bit of trivia even more pointless is that Chen has pitched for 10 teams in his 15-year major league career and, therefore, has called 10 different parks "home". Memo to Orsillo: Just because something is in the media guide or that night's press notes doesn't mean you have to read it.

12 comments:

Allan, they stink you can say it, the announcers shouldn't bother you more than the play on the field. Byrd and Ross cant catch fly balls, Sweeney cant hit a fly ball, he can just not deep enough.Lester is still finding his way. There is still a lot of time to right the ship. I know you think it is overrated but this team needs some heart and it might be easier to get that with subtraction rather than addition.

It may have been right in that situation, but the bunt is still the worst play in baseball. Broxton was struggling, so lets give him an out...

9C, I agree with you. The team is overrated, which isn't saying much given how few predicted them to go too far this season. I am sure they want to win, but something is missing. It may be "heart," or it may be leadership, or it may just be that they are not that good. They have some good hitters, few good pitchers, some sloppy fielders, and whatever strengths they may have are not gelling enough to win games.

I should have entered that W-L contest with my depressing prediction. At least I would get something out of watching them lose so many games.

Sports announcers are garbage. If you have MLB.TV, you can just pick the home video feed and set the audio option to "Park-Natural Sound" and the announcers will be blissfully f***in' silenced. Makes you aware of what teams actually care about baseball and not blaring music at you. When the Braves walked off on the Phils in extras earlier this year (final: 15-13!), there was no "Celebration" blasting over the speakers, just the home crowd celebrating...

Hmmm, on a Roku, I'm not sure. I stream on my PS3 (where the audio feed is one of the choices in a selection menu) and PC desktop/Mac laptop. For the non-PS3 ones (should work on any computer), if you have a game up, there's a tab that says "Change Broadcast" if you hover over the bottom portion of the screen. If you click on that, there's a choice of which video feed you want. If you aren't on the home feed already, click it. To the right of the video options is "audio overlay". Usually you are given the option to stream with the TV announcer audio, the local radio announcer audio or "Park". I hope there's something analogous on Roku, really not sure about that.

There is not much to choose from on the Roku interface, but I'll check tonight. (I doubt it would be in our general settings, but maybe I'll check there too.) We don't use our screen like a computer monitor with a keyboard, so we really can't hover over anything. ... It would be a dream come true if I could get that. Thanks for the post!